Peer Mentoring Service

Peer Mentoring Service

Peer mentoring: Helping you to move on with your life.

What is peer mentoring and how can it help?

A mentor is someone who can guide you with making decisions about your life and help you to get the right support and services you need, at the right time. It will help you find opportunities and build connections with people.

A mentor provides you with support that is focused on you and your needs and wishes. A mentor will help you to find solutions to help you improve your quality of life. They can help you explore issues or obstacles. They help you set goals and achieve things you want to do. They can also help to build your confidence, skills and talent as well as connect with other people socially or through leisure or cultural opportunities.

We’ve found in research into mentoring that it works particularly well when people are in a time of change such as leaving home, care or prison. It helps increase self-confidence, self-esteem and develop social skills. It can also help to bridge gaps, for example where people are distant from family and friends, or are finding it difficult to get support services they need, or get into education, training or job.

Who is the service for?

The mentoring service is for people who are getting help from the Council’s community justice team. For example, they:

may need help to move on to live on their own

may not follow their statutory supervision orders

are socially isolated or vulnerable

would benefit from improving their health and wellbeing

are at risk of becoming homeless

may need support to improve relationships with family and friends

may need to avoid damaging relationships

do not have a job or are in training or education.

If you recognise that you may be in one or these situations, or something similar, you should find mentoring will help you.

Do I have to take part in mentoring?

It’s voluntary. You don’t have to take part. If you start, you can stop at any time. You will not be in breach of your order if you don’t take part or if you stop.

How do I access the service?

You can use the mentoring service if you live in Edinburgh, you are over 16 years of age and are under a statutory supervision order e.g. Community Payback Order and post release licences.

Your social worker, criminal justice worker or community payback officer can set up an initial meeting for you. They will introduce you to your mentor. If you agree to taking part, your mentor will work with you to agree your goals and what you want to get out of it.

Who provides the service?

Sacro provides the mentoring service on behalf of the City of Edinburgh Council. The role of a mentor may be challenging and will not always be straightforward. Sacro mentors have a full understanding of their responsibilities, the process of mentoring as well as being fully briefed on working with complex, challenging and often vulnerable people. Sacro uses volunteers to complement the work being done by paid staff. This is in line with Scottish Government’s policies on ‘active citizenship’ where people volunteer to support their community and help others to do things.

Next steps

You should talk to your social worker, criminal justice worker or community payback officer to see if the mentoring service is right for you. They will then submit a referral to Sacro.